Food Fight: where is your online delivery coming from?

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And people wonder why I don’t trust grubhub, etc. any farther than I can throw them.
They are nice ideas in theory but until they figure out what good business practices are I am good with just driving there for pickup.

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This reminds me a lot of these fake locksmith businesses that google maps has enabled.

I’m sure when enough people have been ripped off, and enough money has been amassed by the wrong people, the magic of the marketplace will decide to move elsewhere, and we’ll all be able to get reliable shady food delivery once more. Wouldn’t want to trouble the regulatory industry with such small potatoes, after all!

/s

“Move quickly and defraud people.” /s

If they get away with doing this with food, it’s only a matter of time until these tech companies openly operate websites enabling fraudulent listings selling counterfeit medicine by stealing the identities of legitimate pharmacies.

Individual business can threaten to sue and they might take down the individual fraudulent listings which probably bring in less than their law firms’ billable hours. But the same fraudsters of someone else will just create a new listing for the same businesses, and most businesses will never find out they’ve had their identities stolen.

They’re straight up facilitating identity theft and circumvention of health laws. State and district prosecutors need to go after them like they would any clearing house for identity thieves that wasn’t owned by billionaire investors.

There needs to be laws requiring these companies to obtain formal permission directly from the businesses before listing them, but so far lawmakers won’t even force them to prevent others from claiming businesses they don’t own. Yelp straight-up tries to bully businesses by telling them if they don’t do business with Yelp, Yelp will allow someone else to claim the listing. They’re brazenly using mafia tactics.

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I’ve done online food ordering with JustEat, which seems to just manage your transaction with the people selling, so the takeaway places use their own delivery people.

And of course I’ve ordered directly from places online (and by phone like the dark ages).

Is it less common for places to keep their own delivery staff in the States?

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Unregulated car-depreciation-powered services have become very popular because people have been very bad at calculating out that their personal vehicles are losing value at a much faster rate than they’re making money (often less than minimum wage as well).

They usually aren’t tipped by default, the systems they’re working for often steal their tips, and they are generally cheaper to use than real employees.

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I suppose we’re on an earlier point of the trend on this side of the pond. Or at least my semi-rural haunt is - I haven’t an insight on the larger.

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Places that deliver often do have specific staff for that. But these new services are often delivering for places that do not have delivery otherwise.

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